SILVER'S HIDDEN CRISIS

SILVER'S HIDDEN CRISIS

The silver market has continued to function for years despite persistent supply deficits. Industrial demand kept growing. More silver was being consumed than mined. Yet physical shortages never became severe enough to force a major repricing. China may have been central to that flow of silver. Large amounts of silver doré were shipped to China for refining before finding their way back into global markets. The steady flow of metal helped keep physical silver available while allowing producers to hedge future output in financial markets. But trade tensions between the United States and China may have marked a turning point. After the United States imposed higher tariffs, China tightened restrictions on rare earth exports and related technologies. Silver was also added to the U.S. list of minerals considered important for defence and advanced manufacturing. China now appears to be importing more silver while releasing less back into international markets. Within weeks, lease rates in London’s silver market rose sharply, and silver prices began moving higher. If more silver remains inside China, less metal is available to the rest of the world. Silver supply depends on more than silver mines More than half of global silver production comes as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. Those industries rely heavily on sulphuric acid during the refining process. Disruptions to the supply of sulphuric acid can eventually reduce silver production, even if demand remains unchanged. Supply chains have become more fragile in recent months. The conflict involving Iran disrupted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest trade routes. Around the same period, China suspended sulphuric acid exports. Australian manufacturers reported supply shortages, while refiners warned that obtaining the chemicals needed for processing metals was becoming increasingly difficult. If copper and nickel production slows, silver output is likely to decline as well because so much of it is produced alongside those metals. Industrial demand continues to grow through electronics, solar panels, and defence applications. At the same time, precious metals are attracting renewed attention as concerns about debt, inflation, and currencies continue. Gold has received most of that attention. Silver has not. Historically, silver has often followed gold, although with much larger price swings because its market is considerably smaller. The market could now be influenced by two long-term trends. Physical supply may become tighter if China continues accumulating silver while mining output slows. Monetary demand may also increase as investors look for assets that cannot be created through monetary expansion. Neither trend guarantees higher prices. If both continue to develop, the silver market could behave very differently from the way it has for much of the past decade. KEY INSIGHTS 00:00 – 02:56 | How China kept silver prices under pressure The long-standing role of China in refining silver, managing global supply, and influencing silver pricing. 02:57 – 05:35 | Why China’s silver policy changed Trade tensions, critical mineral designation, and China’s growing silver imports reshape the global supply picture. 05:36 – 08:07 | A growing constraint on silver production How sulphuric acid shortages and disruptions to copper and nickel refining could reduce future silver supply. 08:08 – 09:46 | Silver’s industrial and monetary role Why silver serves both modern industry and as a monetary metal with a long history across Asia. 09:47 – 10:38 | Physical demand is tightening the market Growing industrial demand, reduced Western liquidity, and China’s accumulation of silver. 10:39 – 11:00 | Why silver could move faster than gold Silver’s smaller market, stronger price swings, and its role as an accessible monetary metal. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vongreyerz.substack.com [https://vongreyerz.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

THE FINAL SIX YEARS OF A 100-YEAR CYCLE

Economic and political developments often dominate discussions about the future. An election result. A central bank decision. A conflict in the Middle East. A shift in trade policy. These developments attract attention because they are visible. They dominate headlines, move markets, and shape investor sentiment. Yet some of the forces that shape history unfold over much longer periods. Simon Hunt believes we may now be entering one of those periods. His outlook is built around the Benner Cycle, a chart first published more than 150 years ago. While many investors dismiss long-term cycle analysis, Hunt argues that the Benner Cycle has tracked major turning points with surprising accuracy. The chart identifies 2026 as a peak and points toward 2032 as the end of a 100-year cycle that began during the depths of the Great Depression. The years ahead are unlikely to follow a straight path. Hunt expects a series of shorter cycles marked by recessions, inflationary periods, rallies, and booms before the cycle finally ends in a bust. To understand why, he begins with geopolitics. Recent discussions surrounding Iran have received considerable attention, particularly after repeated claims that a new agreement may be close. Iran has rejected those claims, but Hunt believes the larger story lies elsewhere. He points to recent meetings involving Russia, China, and Iran as signs of a broader shift taking place across the world. In his view, the world is moving from a unipolar system toward a multipolar one. This transition remains in its early stages, but Hunt believes it will define much of the next six years. In June, Iran announced the creation of a security belt stretching from the Strait of Hormuz through the Bab al-Mandab Strait and into the Red Sea. Hunt interprets this as a declaration that Iran and its allies intend to exert greater influence over oil flows leaving the Middle East. Energy remains one of the most important inputs in the global economy. Changes in supply, transportation, and pricing eventually work their way through manufacturing, agriculture and consumer markets. Against that backdrop, Hunt expects the current market correction to continue in the months ahead before giving way to a substantial relief rally. Using the S&P 500 as a guide, he believes equities could eventually climb toward 8,500. At the same time, he expects recessionary conditions to develop in the United States and much of the rest of the world by the end of the year, with recession extending through much of 2027. Financial markets and the real economy do not always move in the same direction at the same time. But the period after 2027 is where Hunt sees the greatest risks. His view is that a renewed inflationary surge could mark the years between 2028 and 2032. Part of that expectation comes from fiscal and monetary policy, but he also points to rising food prices, fertilizer shortages, and weather-related disruptions. Particular attention is given to the effects of a Super El Niño on Asian food production and the longer-term Gleissberg weather cycle. Taken together, these factors could place additional pressure on global food supplies at a time when energy markets are already under strain. Hunt compares the period ahead to the inflationary environment experienced between 1978 and 1982. At the same time, the contest between a unipolar and multipolar world is expected to intensify. Iran, in particular, could assume a far more prominent role in global affairs because of its influence over Middle Eastern energy routes. For Hunt, these developments are not separate stories. They form part of the same transition. Economic pressures, geopolitical shifts, inflation, and monetary policy are all unfolding within the final years of a century-long cycle. This brings us to gold. THE SECURITY THAT GOLD PROVIDES Hunt argues that periods of weakness should be viewed as buying opportunities, not simply because of inflation, but because gold serves as a form of security during periods of political, monetary, and economic change. If the U.S. dollar declines by 50% between 2028 and 2032, as he expects, then gold should reach at least $10,000 by 2032. Whether that forecast proves correct remains to be seen. What matters is the broader point. The next six years may not simply mark the end of another market cycle. They may mark the end of a century-long era. KEY INSIGHTS 00:00 – 00:46 | The final six years have begun A 150-year-old cycle chart points to 2026 as a major peak and 2032 as the end of a 100-year cycle. 00:47 – 02:42 | Multipolarity is replacing unipolarity The balance of power is moving away from a U.S.-led system toward a world increasingly shaped by China, Russia, Iran, and other regional powers. 02:43 – 04:03 | Recession comes before the next rally A market correction and a global recession could unfold through 2027 before equities stage a significant recovery. 04:04 – 05:34 | Lower rates may come before money printing Interest rates could fall first as governments refinance debt before policymakers turn back to monetary stimulus. 05:35 – 06:56 | Inflation returns between 2028 and 2032 Food shortages, higher energy prices, fertilizer constraints, and weather disruptions could drive a new inflationary cycle. 06:57 – 07:23 | The battle between two world orders The years ahead may be defined by the struggle between the existing unipolar system and an emerging multipolar one. 07:24 – 07:32 | Gold protects against the final phase Gold is presented as protection against inflation, currency weakness, and the economic instability expected in the years ahead. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vongreyerz.substack.com [https://vongreyerz.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

BUY SILVER WITH BOTH HANDS

Investors rarely welcome corrections. When prices rise, confidence grows. But as prices fall (even within a long-term uptrend), doubt quickly returns. Von Greyerz argues that is what’s happening in silver today. Silver has gone up from $4 at the beginning of this century to as high as $120. Viewed against that move, the recent correction appears far less significant than many investors believe. The chart below puts the move into perspective. Von Greyerz argues that the current pullback is a normal correction following a powerful advance. He also believes investors waiting for confirmation may end up buying at much higher prices. But the story extends beyond silver itself. For years, investors have viewed rising precious metals prices as evidence that gold and silver are becoming more valuable. Von Greyerz says the opposite. Silver is not rising. It’s the purchasing power of paper currencies falling. Every monetary era eventually reaches the same fate. Currencies lose value, but precious metals remain the same. GOLD AS THE FOUNDATION While silver may offer greater upside, Von Greyerz still favours a larger allocation to gold because of its role as long-term wealth preservation. Perhaps the most revealing part of his argument involves valuation. Consider all the gold ever mined in human history. It’s only slightly higher than the combined value of the twelve largest publicly traded companies in the United States. Von Greyerz mentions that this comparison shows how undervalued gold remains relative to financial assets. The same pattern can be seen in central bank reserves. It’s too close to the valuation of one tech company. For Von Greyerz, these comparisons reveal a growing disconnect between monetary assets and financial assets. Which brings us back to silver. He often describes silver as “gold on steroids” because it has historically moved faster than gold during major precious metals bull markets. If gold’s valuation gap eventually closes, he believes silver could outperform it significantly. Whether that adjustment takes five years or ten years is impossible to know. What Von Greyerz believes is that the current correction will be remembered as part of a much larger move to come. KEY INSIGHTS 00:00 – 01:27 | Corrections are part of a bull market Von Greyerz mentions that the recent pullback in gold and silver is a normal correction following an exponential move higher and does not change the long-term trend. 01:28 – 02:31 | Buy silver before the next move The current correction offers investors another opportunity to accumulate silver. He also argues that silver’s rise reflects the continuing decline of paper currencies. 02:32 – 03:20 | Financial assets face major repricing Von Greyerz warns that stocks, bonds, and property could lose between 75% and 95% of their value when measured against gold. 03:21 – 04:32 | Gold remains deeply undervalued Comparing gold to the world’s largest corporations, he argues that precious metals remain inexpensive relative to financial assets and equity markets. 04:33 – 04:46 | Silver is gold on steroids Silver has historically outperformed gold during major precious metals bull markets. Von Greyerz believes it could move two to three times faster than gold in the years ahead. 04:47 – End | Precious metals are the foundation of wealth preservation Gold and silver should be viewed as the foundation of a wealth pyramid and stored securely with direct ownership and access. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vongreyerz.substack.com [https://vongreyerz.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

GOLD WILL NOT GO UP IN THE NEXT 5-10 YEARS

For decades, investors have been conditioned to focus on asset prices. They watch stock indexes, property values, bond yields and commodity prices. They celebrate gains and fear losses, assuming wealth can be measured by the number of dollars, euros, pounds or yen attached to an asset. But what if the measuring stick itself is broken? What if the real story of the last century has not been the rise of stocks, property or even gold, but the steady destruction of the currencies used to measure them? Before discussing gold, inflation, debt or financial markets, it is worth stepping back and examining a much bigger picture. The chart below may be one of the simplest—and most important—charts in finance. Measured against gold, every major paper currency of the last century has lost between 97% and 99% of its purchasing power. The German mark collapsed. The British pound steadily declined. The Japanese yen, the euro and even the U.S. dollar followed the same path. Different countries. Different governments. Different economic systems. Yet the outcome has always been remarkably similar. As Voltaire observed nearly three centuries ago: “Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value: zero.” The final stage of every monetary era tends to follow a familiar pattern. Governments accumulate debts they cannot realistically repay. The printing press becomes the preferred solution. Confidence gradually erodes. Purchasing power disappears. History offers many examples, but few are as dramatic as Weimar Germany. Between 1919 and 1923, the price of gold in German marks exploded from roughly 100 marks to more than 100 trillion marks. Gold itself did not change. What changed was the currency. The mark became progressively less valuable until it eventually lost all credibility as money. Most people assume such collapses happen suddenly. In reality, they usually follow a different pattern. Imagine a stadium being filled with water. One drop falls in the first minute. The amount doubles every minute thereafter. How long before the stadium is full? Only fifty minutes. Yet after forty-five minutes, the stadium is still just 7% full. The overwhelming majority of the filling occurs in the final moments. Debt growth, money creation and inflation often behave in exactly the same way. What appears manageable for years can rapidly become uncontrollable once exponential growth takes over. According to Egon von Greyerz, the modern monetary system may now be approaching that final stage. The turning point came in 1971. When President Nixon closed the gold window, the dollar was severed from gold and the world entered a new era of unconstrained credit expansion. Since 1971, gold has risen more than 130-fold in U.S. dollar terms. Most investors see this chart and conclude that gold has become dramatically more valuable. Von Greyerz argues the opposite. Gold is not rising. Paper money is falling. That distinction is critical because it changes how investors think about wealth preservation. If gold were truly becoming more valuable, its purchasing power should constantly increase. Yet history suggests something very different. For thousands of years, a cow has generally cost between half an ounce and one ounce of gold. Empires rose and fell. Wars were fought. Currencies appeared and disappeared. Yet gold continued to buy roughly the same amount of real-world goods. Its purchasing power remained remarkably stable. What changed was not gold. What changed was the value of the currencies used to measure it. This is why Von Greyerz describes gold not as an investment, but as money itself. For over 5,000 years, gold has served as a store of value across civilizations, monetary systems and political regimes. Paper currencies come and go. Gold remains. That is why the central question for investors may not be: “How high will gold go?” The more important question may be: “How much purchasing power will paper assets lose?” Von Greyerz believes the answer could be devastating. He argues that investors who remain concentrated in stocks, bonds and other financial assets could eventually lose 90–95% of their wealth in real terms as the current monetary era comes to an end. Whether that process takes five years or ten years is impossible to know. But history suggests that monetary systems, like all cycles, eventually reach their conclusion. And when they do, those holding assets with enduring purchasing power tend to survive the transition far better than those holding promises denominated in depreciating paper currencies. KEY INSIGHTS 00:00 – 01:18 | We are at the end of a monetary era Von Greyerz argues that the current debt-based monetary system is approaching its final stage after decades of money printing. 01:19 – 03:43 | Fiat currencies always die History shows that every paper currency eventually returns to its intrinsic value: zero. 03:44 – 05:30 | Exponential collapse comes suddenly Using the stadium analogy, he explains why monetary crises appear slow for years and then accelerate rapidly. 05:31 – 06:57 | Gold is not going up Gold’s rising price reflects the declining value of paper currencies, not a change in gold itself. 06:58 – 08:25 | Money printing drives gold higher The expansion of global money supply has closely mirrored the rise in gold since 1971. 08:26 – 10:28 | Gold preserves purchasing power Using the “cow analogy,” he argues that gold has maintained its buying power for thousands of years. 10:29 – 11:45 | Most investors are asking the wrong question Instead of asking how high gold will go, investors should ask how much purchasing power they risk losing. 11:46 – 12:44 | Gold and silver are wealth protection Physical gold and silver are presented as insurance against the destruction of paper wealth. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vongreyerz.substack.com [https://vongreyerz.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

GLOBAL POPULATION TO GO FROM 8 BILLION TO 4 BILLION

For most of recorded human history, the world’s population barely moved. Empires rose and collapsed. Entire civilizations disappeared. Wars, plagues, famine, and monetary destruction repeatedly reset societies back toward survival rather than expansion. And yet through thousands of years of human history, the global population remained below one billion people. Then, in the span of barely two centuries, everything changed. The industrial revolution unleashed a force unlike anything humanity had previously experienced: concentrated energy. Coal, oil, mechanization, industrial agriculture, automation, and later debt-fueled globalization allowed civilization to accelerate vertically. Human productivity exploded. Food production scaled. Transportation compressed geography. Medicine extended lifespans. Population growth went from historical stagnation to near exponential expansion. In historical terms, the modern world is not normal. It is an anomaly. The global population remained relatively stable for thousands of years before entering a near-vertical expansion after the industrial age. What took humanity thousands of years to build was multiplied in just a few generations. The world surged from one billion people in the early 1800s to more than eight billion today. But history also teaches that no system — biological, monetary, or civilizational — moves vertically forever. Every exponential trend eventually encounters limits. And when such limits are reached, the correction is rarely gentle. Throughout history, periods of rapid expansion have almost always been followed by periods of contraction. The Black Death of the 14th century reduced large parts of Europe’s population by nearly half. Entire empires throughout history have collapsed under combinations of war, disease, food shortages, debt, resource depletion, and social fragmentation. Modern civilization assumes itself immune from historical cycles because technology appears more advanced. Yet history repeatedly shows that complexity itself often becomes fragility. Today, many of the same structural pressures are quietly re-emerging simultaneously. Geopolitical tensions are rising. Sovereign debt has reached levels previously unimaginable. Social cohesion across many nations continues to deteriorate. Birth rates are collapsing throughout much of the developed world while resource pressures intensify beneath the surface of the global economy. These are not isolated events. They are interconnected symptoms of a system under mounting strain. Perhaps the most overlooked signal of all is demographic decline itself. While markets remain focused on short-term cycles, the long-term trajectory of birth rates points toward something far more structural. Across much of the world, populations are aging while fertility rates continue falling steadily lower. A civilization built upon perpetual expansion is beginning to encounter the mathematics of exhaustion. None of this guarantees an imminent collapse. History does not unfold in straight lines, nor do demographic shifts occur overnight. But the assumption that the modern age can expand indefinitely — economically, financially, energetically, and demographically — is becoming increasingly difficult to defend. The great illusion of every era is the belief that “this time is different.” History rarely agrees. KEY INSIGHTS: 00:00 – 01:18 | Modern population growth was built on energy Egon explains that for most of human history, population growth remained relatively flat.The explosive rise from 1 billion to 8 billion people only began after industrialization, cheap energy, machines, and automation transformed the modern world. 01:19 – 02:28 | Exponential growth never lasts forever The video argues that any chart moving vertically upward for long enough eventually reaches a breaking point.What appears permanent during expansion often becomes unstable in hindsight. 02:29 – 03:35 | Every vertical trend eventually corrects Egon argues that population growth has entered historically unsustainable territory.Wars, economic instability, disease, declining birth rates, and resource pressures could eventually force a major global correction. 03:36 – 04:42 | Governments are preparing for the wrong future The closing section argues that most governments and institutions continue assuming endless growth.But if the structural foundations behind modern expansion begin to weaken, the consequences could be far larger than most policymakers expect. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vongreyerz.substack.com [https://vongreyerz.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]